It's a tale of joy and sorrow today Nation. And rage. And hope for the future. Give a read if you dare. I mean it's like 33 degrees in the Capital City. We can't help but assume everyone is skipping work and is getting their tan on.

JOY

Our main homie since day one and now wealthy sell out former founder of the Nation Network @bingofuel has been hard at work as always and has just put the first annual edition of the Yeggies - the Edmonton New Media awards - in the books over the weekend at the Shaw.

Some of Edmonton's most dedicated and prolifically wired up citizens were in attendance and the list of winners is impressive. It's about time Edmonton starts taking itself more seriously and recognizing people like @MasterMaq and our secret Twitter crush @KikkiPlanet is a great start.

Congrats to everyone who won and everyone involved.

And lo and behold if a certain little hockey blog didn't win Best in Sport in Edmonton. We have come a long long way since starting as a double dog dare between two strikingly handsome men working at a Utility in Edmonton. We apologize for not being in attendance bingofuel, as an imaginary internet person we have a full dance card of playing Sega Genesis and trolling plentyoffish.

We can't wait for year 2 though.

RAGE

Seriously NHL? Seriously you didn't even nominate the 2013 Calder Scoring Champion for the 2013 Calder Trophy? How can this even be possible? Granted as Gregor pointed out earlier the bulk of his output came at the end of the season but surely to heavens winning the scoring title should get someone a nomination.

How the Mighty Edmonton Oilers have never had a Calder Trophy winner to call it's own is one of the more puzzling aberrations in the NHL record books. Think of all the talent that failed to take home the rookie hardware in Oilers silks - Messier, Kurri, Coffey, Arnott, Hall, Eberle, Nuge and now YakCity.

No shame in being in that company of Oilers that have been snubbed by NYC we suppose.

не беспокойтесь о Колдер Трофи вы получите их следующий год Гомерчик

HOPE

We are slowly moving the needle in the StreakCred battle to not cost Wanye $10,000 of his own money. The article written the other day begging everyone to part with $20 to play the new playoff game saw some uptick. To keep things going - we still need like 200 more people to sign up to be able to get money to the MS Bike Tour and the Edmonton Down Syndrome Society - we will take a slightly different approach today.

FOMO

We are all having a chirpfest with each other on twitter with regards to StreakCred. We are regularly seeing people crash and burn not being able to correctly predict a streak of more than like 2 games tops. Even a genius like @baresnake who took down second place in the regular season draft can barely piece together a decent run.

Even an angel like @mig14 over in Ireland has declared that she is quitting because she is so frustrated but later admitted she is having a blast competing for charity.

Seriously Nation you need to fire over to StreakCred.com and sign up. We know we are all pissed that the Oilers are on the outside looking in again in the playoffs - but you are missing out on a hilarious time if you aren't already playing.

Yak is more of a side show than a player. Can be very entertaining in no hit games and fits perfectly with this coaching staff as they hold no players accountable. Hall is heading into year 4 and it takes a trip to Europe to get him benched for constantly turning the puck over in neutral ice.

Bite me, Clyde.

Troll the other 364 days, but not today.

Yak played with gumption unmatched by pretty much all of the rest of the team, especially as he got more comfortable in the league. He got jobbed, IMO.

I was hoping you were going to say Jean Beliveau or someone like that. So we could be righteous in our indignation and be equipped with a good "I told you so!" when Yak puts up HOF numbers down the road.

no thanks to vigneault. how he's treated their goaltending situation has been a total gong show. also, he strikes me as a pompous ass.

It is Gills' fault for A)Signing him to a ridiculous contract B) Signing Schneider to a starting Goalies contract 3? years after C)Not trading Luo during the summer D) Not trading Luo at or before the trade deadline.

As a Flames fan, my biggest fear would be the Oilers hiring someone like Babcock. He is a teacher who holds his players accountable and is a proven winner. His style isn't as restrictive as say, Hitchcock so it wouldn't suffocate the players. Wonder what he could do with this young talent?

Yak is more of a side show than a player. Can be very entertaining in no hit games and fits perfectly with this coaching staff as they hold no players accountable. Hall is heading into year 4 and it takes a trip to Europe to get him benched for constantly turning the puck over in neutral ice.

Many NHL media types early on in the season were really excited and expected the young guns in Edmonton to finally lead the Oilers out of the wilderness this year... well we all know how that ended...Their enthusiasm and votes, went down the drain with the Oilers season. Yak and Schultz were swept down the same drain.

Yak is more of a side show than a player. Can be very entertaining in no hit games and fits perfectly with this coaching staff as they hold no players accountable. Hall is heading into year 4 and it takes a trip to Europe to get him benched for constantly turning the puck over in neutral ice.

Yak played with gumption unmatched by pretty much all of the rest of the team, especially as he got more comfortable in the league. He got jobbed, IMO.

* Hopes Yak does not turn out like Reg Sinclair.

** Actually agrees with Clyde the coaching staff is far too soft.

Bite me Clyde! Classy.
Not trolling.
You have seen enough and played enough good hockey to know that these players are being allowed to do whatever and not being taught how to play this game. Right now, Yak is just a burst here and there. Even in a pro room, accountability and structure must be taught and enforced. Does anyone see this being done in Edmonton? Schultz signed there because he was guaranteed top 4 minutes. What type of culture does that create? Perhaps they do have a plan. Draft the most raw talent possible and let them roll. Eventually they will succeed.

It is Gills' fault for A)Signing him to a ridiculous contract B) Signing Schneider to a starting Goalies contract 3? years after C)Not trading Luo during the summer D) Not trading Luo at or before the trade deadline.

i'm not saying the whole situation is his fault but he isn't handling it very well. he hasn't allowed either goalie to take the ball and run with it.

no thanks to vigneault. how he's treated their goaltending situation has been a total gong show. also, he strikes me as a pompous ass.

As a Flames fan, my biggest fear would be the Oilers hiring someone like Babcock. He is a teacher who holds his players accountable and is a proven winner. His style isn't as restrictive as say, Hitchcock so it wouldn't suffocate the players. Wonder what he could do with this young talent?

Yak is more of a side show than a player. Can be very entertaining in no hit games and fits perfectly with this coaching staff as they hold no players accountable. Hall is heading into year 4 and it takes a trip to Europe to get him benched for constantly turning the puck over in neutral ice.

There is absolutely an Eastern bias among NHL hockey writers ... in fact, an Eastern writer once told me that.

When I was a sports reporter at a small daily in the 2000s, my one trip to “The Show” was covering the Heritage Classic in Edmonton in November 2003. It was a lot of fun – but not for the reasons that everyone else thought it was fun. For me, the neat part about the experience wasn’t the game (the NHL game was awful; the alumni game not much better), the seating (terrible sight lines) or surviving the weather (sitting out in the cold for eight hours loses its novelty around Hour 3). Rather, it was the chance to schmooze with the men and women who cover the NHL.

I struck up a chat with one of the writers from a U.S. newspaper, who shared all kinds of stories, including a hilarious one about how he thought he was going to freeze to death when he drove from Saskatoon to Prince Albert on a 40-below day to watch Mike Modano play for the Raiders in the late 1980s.

Anyway, I asked him about voting for the NHL awards. I was curious to know how it worked. Specifically, I wanted to know how awards that shouldn’t have been so close ended up being close (i.e. Mark Messier barely edging out Ray Bourque for the Hart in 1990). And I wanted to know if there was such thing as an Eastern bias in the awards voting. I told him that I thought Trevor Linden deserved the Calder over Brian Leetch and that Rick Meagher completely stole the Selke from Esa Tikkanen. (Yes, I know – I needed to get a life).

But the reporter, not surprisingly, was very straight-forward and matter-of-fact. He said, yes, there’s an Eastern bias, but not really an intentional one. It was more geographic. He said that, the reality is, there’s a “bloc” of hockey writers on the East coast that simply don’t see a lot of the Western Conference teams play very much, mainly due to the time zone differences (and the fact that they’re busy covering their own team).

Plus, he said, because there isn’t a lot of “residual” coverage of the NHL in those eastern markets – i.e. there isn’t really even a lot of “word-of-mouth” that goes on around the league down there, certainly nothing like you’d see up in Canada, where (Toronto aside), the working media in each NHL city try hard to keep tabs on the goings-on of other teams in the league.

Consequently, he said, if you’re a player who’s doing big things out anywhere west of Detroit (especially Western Canada), those “big things” better be VERY big. He said a lot of writers on the East Coast vote for awards like the Calder based on who they’ve seen ... or sometimes, it’s by a simple glance at who’s leading the scoring race for rookies. So if there’s a rookie hotshot out west, his boxcars needed to be across-the-board-better than everyone else.

In Yakupov’s case, he needed to win the rookie scoring title outright. No ties. And, even though he led in goals, he probably needed to hit 20 to really stick out. His numbers needed to completely outshine Huberdeau in order for the eastern writers to vote for someone they didn’t see. The only thing that the writers out east would have known about Yakupov is that he was the No. 1 pick last June and he slid down the ice after scoring a game-tying goal against LA. That’s it.

I’m not saying Yakupov deserved the Calder, but I thought he should have been nominated. As for Schultz – again, I think it’s a case of too-bright, too-early and on the wrong stage. If he’s a rookie on the Rangers blueline, he’d have been nominated and we’d be hearing Brian Leetch comparisons.

That said, I still have no idea why Saad or Gallagher were nominated. I didn’t even know they were in the Calder conversation until 24 hours ago.

There is absolutely an Eastern bias among NHL hockey writers ... in fact, an Eastern writer once told me that.

When I was a sports reporter at a small daily in the 2000s, my one trip to “The Show” was covering the Heritage Classic in Edmonton in November 2003. It was a lot of fun – but not for the reasons that everyone else thought it was fun. For me, the neat part about the experience wasn’t the game (the NHL game was awful; the alumni game not much better), the seating (terrible sight lines) or surviving the weather (sitting out in the cold for eight hours loses its novelty around Hour 3). Rather, it was the chance to schmooze with the men and women who cover the NHL.

I struck up a chat with one of the writers from a U.S. newspaper, who shared all kinds of stories, including a hilarious one about how he thought he was going to freeze to death when he drove from Saskatoon to Prince Albert on a 40-below day to watch Mike Modano play for the Raiders in the late 1980s.

Anyway, I asked him about voting for the NHL awards. I was curious to know how it worked. Specifically, I wanted to know how awards that shouldn’t have been so close ended up being close (i.e. Mark Messier barely edging out Ray Bourque for the Hart in 1990). And I wanted to know if there was such thing as an Eastern bias in the awards voting. I told him that I thought Trevor Linden deserved the Calder over Brian Leetch and that Rick Meagher completely stole the Selke from Esa Tikkanen. (Yes, I know – I needed to get a life).

But the reporter, not surprisingly, was very straight-forward and matter-of-fact. He said, yes, there’s an Eastern bias, but not really an intentional one. It was more geographic. He said that, the reality is, there’s a “bloc” of hockey writers on the East coast that simply don’t see a lot of the Western Conference teams play very much, mainly due to the time zone differences (and the fact that they’re busy covering their own team).

Plus, he said, because there isn’t a lot of “residual” coverage of the NHL in those eastern markets – i.e. there isn’t really even a lot of “word-of-mouth” that goes on around the league down there, certainly nothing like you’d see up in Canada, where (Toronto aside), the working media in each NHL city try hard to keep tabs on the goings-on of other teams in the league.

Consequently, he said, if you’re a player who’s doing big things out anywhere west of Detroit (especially Western Canada), those “big things” better be VERY big. He said a lot of writers on the East Coast vote for awards like the Calder based on who they’ve seen ... or sometimes, it’s by a simple glance at who’s leading the scoring race for rookies. So if there’s a rookie hotshot out west, his boxcars needed to be across-the-board-better than everyone else.

In Yakupov’s case, he needed to win the rookie scoring title outright. No ties. And, even though he led in goals, he probably needed to hit 20 to really stick out. His numbers needed to completely outshine Huberdeau in order for the eastern writers to vote for someone they didn’t see. The only thing that the writers out east would have known about Yakupov is that he was the No. 1 pick last June and he slid down the ice after scoring a game-tying goal against LA. That’s it.

I’m not saying Yakupov deserved the Calder, but I thought he should have been nominated. As for Schultz – again, I think it’s a case of too-bright, too-early and on the wrong stage. If he’s a rookie on the Rangers blueline, he’d have been nominated and we’d be hearing Brian Leetch comparisons.

That said, I still have no idea why Saad or Gallagher were nominated. I didn’t even know they were in the Calder conversation until 24 hours ago.